My heroine can kick your heroine's butt.

Contests from the other side

21. March 2007

I’ve been complaining about contest judges and their lack of real feedback for as long as I’ve entered contests.Well, why don’t you do better then, I’ve been asked.So I volunteered to judge a contest (and I took heaps of entries, too). I just judged my first entry (which was good, not great). I made a point of writing in the margins of the MS, and wrote comments in each section of the score sheet. I’m judging the way I would like to be judged.Of course I don’t know whether that’s good or not. For all I know, the author will hate me for daring to criticise their master work. Doesn’t bother me. it’s help freely given, and I hope they take it in the spirit it was given in.I’m learning a lot, too. There’s nothing like seeing what doesn’t work to get a better understanding of how things could work.

Which I’ll now have to apply to my own work.Which reminds me. I wonder where my two finalist entries are at? Haven’t heard back from them in a while…

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I did the exact same thing! I’ve been judging for a year now and really enjoy it. At least you know that person won’t get three sets of blank pages back with zero feedback. That’s SO annoying and makes you wonder why you spent the entry money.